Articles of the Day
American Airlines Faces Uphill Battle In Trademark Suit Over Google Keyword Ads - Despite its strong brand awareness and deep pockets to pursue the litigation, American Airlines faces an uphill battle in its suit seeking damages from Google for allowing rivals to buy keyword ads triggered by its own trademarks.
The Little Engine That Could: Ask.com 3D Redesign On Track - Almost 10% of searchers at Ask.com now choose to refine their queries through “Search Suggestions,” one of the upgrades bundled into the search engine’s user interface overhaul two months ago.
Two Video Creators To Distribute Via Google AdSense - Finance company Media Rights Capital has partnered with “Family Guy” creator Seth MacFarlane and teen star Raven-Symone to create original content. What makes the deal different is its distribution strategy, which employs Google’s AdSense network to package the video content along with banner and online video advertising.
Direct/Digital Comprise Nearly A Quarter Of WPP Revenues - WPP Chief Executive Sir Martin Sorrell said he’d like the share to increase to a third of all revenues. He’s using a “wide definition” to reach that figure.
User-Generated Content: Is Anyone Watching? - You know that old philosophical question–if a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? Well, I started thinking about that as it applies to the explosion of Web and cell phone-based user-generated content (UGC). Who will watch the billions of videos being posted?
Growing DVR Ownership Good for TV Ads - Three in 10 households now have a DVR, according to Greenfield Online data released in August 2007. That is even higher than other recent findings. eMarketer predicts that by the end of 2007, 22.1% of US TV households will have a DVR. A survey from Piper Jaffray in early 2007 indicated that 23% of respondents said they owned a DVR. Will TV ad revenue dwindle just because DVR owners can skip through ads? Mr. Macklin doesn’t think so. “Contrary to the views of some analysts and commentators,” he said, “data available today currently do not support the idea that increased use of the Internet, DVRs and VOD has stalled the growth of television ad spending or revenues in the US.”
More Newspaper Sites Add Online Video - More newspapers are adapting to the multimedia challenge by adding video to their Web sites. That was the major finding of The Bivings Group’s “American Newspapers and the Internet: Threat or Opportunity?” report. Bivings analyzed the sites of the top 100 newspapers in the United States, as determined by Audit Bureau of Circulations data. “Major newspapers and wire services have plunged into the online video space in direct competition with TV news sites, even though the print vehicles generally do not have existing content to leverage,” said eMarketer Senior Analyst Paul Verna.
“Traditional” Web Advertising Fails on Social Networks - You can’t find a lot of effective advertising on social networks, according to Forrester Research. The Web research group says that traditional marketing just doesn’t work on sites like MySpace and Facebook, as evidenced by the ineffectiveness of run-of-site, microsite, and other “push” advertising tactics. Forrester says the ROI of the campaigns it studied was very low, which means marketers have to do better a better job of engaging users by providing something of value.
Facebook Costs Aussie Firms $4 Billion Annually - Facebook could be costing employers billions of dollars, says a new study from Internet security firm SurfControl. Because socializing online is a waste of time and money, despite what other reports say about the networking and communication benefits of social networks. The firm, which used a sample of Australian users to conduct the study, said that Facebook users cost as much as $4 billion per year in lost productivity.
AOL Plight Highlights Larger Portal Problem - AOL had little option but to overhaul its failing business model, but despite a positive start to its new life as a free, ad-supported content provider, the Web portal’s ad growth is already narrowing. As a result, Time Warner shareholders are questioning whether it was a smart move for the media giant to keep AOL. The Time Warner unit is still one of the most popular Web destinations, attracting more than 90 million visits per month, but the name of the game these days is monetizing your traffic, something AOL, with 16 percent ad growth in the second quarter, isn’t doing sufficiently.
Google Leaves GrandCentral Users Hanging - Google’s GrandCentral, the company that promised its users “one number for life,” has reneged on that promise just six weeks after being bought by the search giant. Google sent out notices to users last week giving them just eight days until their telephone numbers expired. Neither Google nor GrandCentral has made any official statement about the move.
Are Search Ads A Waste Of Money? - Put aside the issue of possible self-interest. Microsoft’s Atlas has released new research to suggest that paying top dollar for high ad placement of branded keywords on search results pages (such as Google’s) is a waste, because it’s really a “glorified Yellow Pages listing.” Atlas estimates listings tied to branded keywords eat up about half of search budgets. But most consumers who see them were on their way to those sites anyway.
